Mourning and volunteers began Tuesday morning at a Southwest Miami-Dade Publix where they loaded up Thanksgiving meals, and then traveled to the Overtown Youth Center to pass them out to hundreds of families.

“There’s a lot of under-served families here in South Florida,” Mourning said. Many of us kind of get caught up in our own busy daily lives and not realize that about a quarter of our population here in South Florida live below the poverty level.”

This is the 16th Thanksgiving Mourning and his partners, Publix and FedEx, have distributed holiday meals to families in Overtown and Little Haiti.

“He’s taking his time to provide a meal for every family that is enrolled in the Overtown Youth Center, and I’m thankful,” said Overtown resident Libiada Modesto.

The meals include a full turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetables and desert.

“Those that can’t pick the meals up, we deliver the meals to their homes,” Mourning said.

On Thanksgiving day, Mourning will surprise 10 pre-selected families at their homes and deliver fully-cooked meals.

“We tend to forget there’s a lot of people, a lot of people out there that are a lot less fortunate than we are.” Mourning said.